West Seattle weekend scene: Emergency Communication Hubs’ drill

If you live/work in the High Point area, the Neighborhood House center is where you’d go in case of catastrophe – it’s the local Emergency Communication Hub. And it was one of three West Seattle hubs “activated” by volunteers this morning for the drill we previewed earlier this week.

As announced, volunteers ran through a scenario in which not only was there a massive power outage, cellular communication was out too. That’s when point-to-point radio communication comes in handy – the next photo shows Shane Marr, longtime GMRS Net Control operator:

(This photo and next two, courtesy of Karen Berge)

The message board is always key to a hub – it’s where resources and needs would be tracked:

Not sure where your nearest hub is? Go here to find it. And remember – it’s an all-volunteer effort – here are High Point’s new hub captains, Johnny Schmidt and Robert Landis:

Karen Berge adds, “One very cool aspect of today’s drill was that we had two observers who drove down from British Columbia to watch this field exercise. They said that they learned a lot from watching us, as they are in the early stages of setting up a hub there. Conversely, during our debrief after the exercise, we learned some useful things from them.”

JSA, thanks for linking in this map from our site and for the clarification. I’d like to add that citywide, there are lots of hubs…but everyone should be aware that there is a distinction between “emergency communication hubs” (which are part of our radio network) and “community hubs” (with no radio capability) that have been designated by the City as more general gathering places during an emergency. Last summer, the City of Seattle announced that all P-Patch gardens are now “community hubs.” You can find more details about that announcement in this blog post, https://westseattlebeprepared.wordpress.com/2017/06/28/citywide-hub-exercise-and-other-news/. As I noted then, of the P-Patch hubs currently in West Seattle, only the Delridge P-Patch hub has radio capability. I/we feel strongly that this radio capability will be a huge asset during a disaster…

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